Posts Tagged ‘Reuters’

The European Union is considering testing banks‘ defenses against cyber attacks, EU officials and sources said, as concerns grow about the industry’s vulnerability to hacking.

Cyber attacks against banks have been growing in numbers and sophistication in recent years, with criminals finding new ways to target banks beyond trying to illicitly obtain details of their customers‘ online accounts. Last February $81 million was taken from the Bangladesh central bank when hackers broke into its system and gained access to the SWIFT international transactions network.

Global regulators have tightened security requirements for banks after that giant cyber fraud, one of the biggest in history, and in some countries have carried out checks on lenders‘ security systems. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »

A group of business executives has urged the Group of 20 leading economies to resist the temptation to take protectionist measures and to foster international economic cooperation.

Germany took over the G20 presidency last week, a platform Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to use to safeguard multilateral cooperation under threat following Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election.

The B20, the G20’s business outreach arm, said popular concerns about trade liberalisation should be taken seriously but that „seemingly easy solutions risk having long-term negative consequences for business, workers, and consumers.“

„We urge governments to resist the temptation to resort to protectionist measures such as trade barriers or investment restrictions,“ the B20 added in a statement dated Dec. 8, a copy of which Reuters obtained on Friday.

„The challenges of globalisation cannot be solved within national borders,“ the group added. „The G20 is an important forum for international economic cooperation.“

The statement was signed by corporate executives including the CEOs of chemicals group BASF BASF.DE, Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) and e-commerce giant Alibaba (BABA.N).

German officials, while acknowledging privately that they will not have an easy ride leading the G20, stress that the motto for their presidency – „Shaping an Interconnected World“ – indicates they want to take globalisation forward through international cooperation rather than roll it back.

China aims to lay off 5-6 million state workers over the next two to three years as part of efforts to curb industrial overcapacity and pollution, two reliable sources said, Beijing’s boldest retrenchment program in almost two decades.

China’s leadership, obsessed with maintaining stability and making sure redundancies do not lead to unrest, will spend nearly 150 billion yuan ($23 billion) to cover layoffs in just the coal and steel sectors in the next 2-3 years.

The overall figure is likely to rise as closures spread to other industries and even more funding will be required to handle the debt left behind by „zombie“ state firms.

The term refers to companies that have shut down some of their operations but keep staff on their rolls since local governments are worried about the social and economic impact of bankruptcies and unemployment. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »

Politicians and business leaders gathering in the Swiss Alps this week face an increasingly divided world, with the poor falling further behind the super-rich and political fissures in the United States, Europe and the Middle East running deeper than at any time in decades.

Just 62 people, 53 of them men, own as much wealth as the poorest half of the entire world population and the richest 1 percent own more than the other 99 percent put together, anti-poverty charity Oxfam said on Monday.

Significantly, the wealth gap is widening faster than anyone anticipated, with the 1 percent overtaking the rest one year earlier than Oxfam had predicted only a year ago.

Rising inequality and a widening trust gap between people and their political leaders are big challenges for the global elite as they converge on Davos for the annual World Economic Forum, which runs from Jan. 20 to 23.

But the divisions go far beyond those that exist between the haves and have-nots. In the Middle East, the divide between Shi’ites and Sunnis has reached crisis point, with Iran and Saudi Arabia jostling openly for influence in a region reeling from war and the barbarism of Islamic extremists. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »

This post examines another excellent in-depth investigation by Reuters into global financial stability issues, and the role of tax havens in this giant game of pain and plunder. The investigation uncovers, among other things, a whole lot of offshore shenanigans, complementing what we (and relatively few others) have been saying for some years now, and it goes right to the heart of what capitalism is — or at least what it has become.

Before reading this, though, see the box “What is a tax haven?” There’s a lot of misunderstanding out there.

What is a tax haven?

The term ‘tax haven’ is a bit of a misnomer: they aren’t just about tax. We will mostly use the term ‘offshore’ here instead of ‘tax haven’– what we are talking about is the same basic phenomenon: jurisdictions offering escape routes to financial players elsewhere, helping them avoid taxes or disclosure or financial regulation or whatever other ‘burdens’ of society they don’t like.

In financial stability terms the world of offshore — a world that includes places like Ireland, Luxembourg, Cayman and the City of London (see box) – has been where financial services players have been able to escape regulatory barriers at home, taking the cream from risky activities while shifting the risks onto taxpayers via bailouts and other nasties. Offshore was very significantly at the root of the global financial crisis that erupted in 2008 — and on all evidence it will be at or near the epicentre of the next one too. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »

This autumn may see anti-austerity coalitions gain power in Portugal, Spain and Italy, while Marine le Pen’s National Front in France presses for outright withdrawal from the eurozone. These countries face a common problem: how to resist the economic devastation that the European Central Bank (ECB), European Council and IMF “troika” has inflicted on Greece and is now intending to do the same to southern Europe.

To resist the depression and debt deflation that the troika seeks to deepen, one needs to bear in mind the dynamics that make the IMF un-reformable. Its destructive role in Greece provides an object lesson for how southern Europe must shun its horde of ideologues, as Third World countries learned to avoid it by May 2013, the year that Turkey capped the world’s extrication from IMF “advice.” Already in 2008, Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced: “We cannot darken our future by bowing to the wishes of the IMF.”[1] Greek voters have now said the same thing. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s confrontation with the West is „artificial“ and aimed at protecting Russia’s ruling elite and distracting attention from a corrupt system, a former Russian oil tycoon said on Wednesday.

„The current confrontation with the West is absolutely artificial,“ Mikhail Khodorkovsky told the Atlantic Council think tank.

„The cooling of relations has been inspired by those Russian elites who want to hold on to power.“

Speaking through a translator, Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, said,„They desperately need an image of an enemy who would distract the attention of the populace from the corruption and inefficiency that exists in the power.“ Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »

Much of the world is trying to put a pause on global trade, immigration and other means of integration and globalization. The global credit crisis triggered the trends: “De-globalization is the partial unwinding of the long-running shift to arrangements that allow capital, goods and services to move more freely around the world,” writes James Saft. He describes evidence of resistance to globalization: Proposals in the British electoral campaign to withdraw from the European Union, tighter bank regulations and threats from bankers to relocate from traditional banking centers, and opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement over fears about a loss of jobs. Global trade is slowing. The hope among some analysts, Saft notes, is that slowing globalization could reduce inequality: “If globalization led to stronger growth but less-equal distribution of the proceeds, then de-globalization may well produce the reverse.” He concludes that the trends aiming to reduce inequality could reduce asset prices and profit margins, increase barriers to entry and improve benefits of diversification. Investors must adjust to a new landscape. – YaleGlobal

European shares rose close to seven-year highs on Tuesday as better than expected German retail sales further buoyed investors days before the European Central Bank kicks off a trillion-euro bond buying program.

The gains follow a rise in Asia and another record day on the Wall Street.

Euro zone government bond yields were slightly higher but remained near record lows as investors anticipated the ECB’s purchases. The central bank will finalize the details of its scheme at its meeting on Thursday and may start buying immediately after that. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »